Lucinda part 1
by Kard0
Summary: The night Voldemort died, the rumours and stories spread like wildfire. Lucinda was one of the first to hear any of them, meeting a contact in the darkness of an alley...


It's not true, that all Slytherin students go bad. It is true that all wizards that go bad were once in Slytherin, but that's a wholly different thing. Don't tar us all with the same brush.

There are two kinds of student in Slytherin. There's the big, dumb troll-like bullies, and there's the twisted, cruel, intelligent ones. When I discovered this, of course I realised I was on the intelligent side. But twisted and cruel? I was not. I'm a lot of things – practical, unromantic, angry – but I'm not cruel.

When I was at Hogwarts, there was a lot of fuss about being in Slytherin. It was the time of You-Know-Who. Volde-man. He who must not, etc. (We don't like to say his name, in case we attract his attention.) The majority of students around me, in my own year, the lower and upper years, mostly secretly supported him. Or if they didn't, then at the very least they never thought of him as, say, the Gryffindors did. Your typical Gryffindor would say the V-dude was evil as evil could be. The typical Slytherin, in that time, would say that he was ambitious, powerful, and great, in the classical sense.

I only had one friend in Slytherin, and I'm sure he was only hanging around in the vain hope that he'd see me naked. He was closer to the central figures than me. The night the nameless one was almost destroyed, October 31st, 1981, he came to see me. We met in an alleyway, at some ungodly hour of the morning. Technically, I suppose it was November 1st. Three o'clock in the morning. It was raining, which had put me in a hostile mood.

"Lucinda?" he asked, seeing me approach from the other end of the alley.

"Mark," I responded, in greeting. "What's all this about?"

"It's about He Who Must Not Be Named."

"The V-man. What's he done this time?" I asked. Mark took a step towards me, and held out his hands as if to shush me. Maybe he took my dismissive attitude personally.

It's not that I wasn't scared of the nameless one. I was terrified of him, just like everyone else. But he wasn't here. Mark was. And Mark is really, really not scary.

"No no," he was saying, "He's not done anything. Well, he's done some things. He's killed Lilly and James Potter."

"Oh, right. But Mark, this is hardly news. He kills people all the time. I'd have heard about it sooner or later. Can I go back to bed now?"

"No, no, that's not it," he insisted. He has this facial twitch when he gets nervous, and I saw now that his eye was having spasms like crazy. There was something in his anxiousness that was getting to me. He was sweating. He looked as if he hadn't slept yet. I, on the other hand, had been sleeping for several hours before his letter woke me up.

"What's happened?"

"It's… We… We don't know," muttered Mark. "He went to the Potter's place, and there were explosions… we think… we don't know what to think. But something has gone wrong. By the time I got there, I couldn't get very close… I saw that fat handyman from Hogwarts was poking around…"

"What's gone wrong?" I snapped. I was impatiently curious now.

"He… we think he might be dead…" muttered Mark. He looked over his shoulder nervously.

This was a bombshell. It was worse than a bombshell. This would change everything so much, I couldn't fully appreciate it at the time. My first thoughts were about my own, personal affairs. But they would be sorted out, in time. All Mark could tell me was what he knew. I didn't show Mark that I was surprised or shocked – he would have used emotion against me, as pathetic as he was.

"Was it Moody? Alastor Moody?"

"We don't know," muttered Mark.

"An Auror?"

"We don't know!" snapped Mark. He looked over his shoulder, susprised and upset by his sudden outburst. "Some of the followers… the Death Eaters…" he said it timidly, "Are saying he's not dead. He's just hiding. No one knows what's going on, Lucinda."

"You want me to talk to people, is that it?"

"Well… yes… people…"

"Talk to me on my own terms, Mark. Give the pureblood thing up."

"If you can call ghosts people, then. And centaurs, and goblins, and frogs and toads and snakes! Slime and spooks, then yes, I want you to talk to people," he hissed, frustrated.

That's my thing, by the way. I have contacts. I have friends in all sorts of places. Universal communication. Translator, messenger, rumour-monger, even medium. When I say universal communication, I do indeed mean universal.

"Speaking of goblins, I wonder what'll happen to the V-man's Gringotts vault," I wondered out loud. "I bet there's a whole bunch of stuff in there."

"Everything will come out in the open now, Lucinda," whined Mark.

"Why is that a problem for me?" I replied, "I've not done anything illegal. I've not done anything I should be ashamed of." I grinned, "Have you?"

The look on Mark's face could have killed him. I didn't know human facial muscles could move like that. Azkaban can do strange things to a man, they say, but most of those things he has done to himself before he gets there.

I said there were two kinds of student, in Slytherin. The brutes and the brains. The brains all fancy themselves as wolves among the sheep. They enjoy walking through a busy room and thinking about all the things they've done, that the people around them will never know about. Wolves aren't like that.

But I lied. There are technically three kinds of student, in Slytherin. The brutes, the brains who think they're wolves, and the third kind. The third kind are hunters amongst those wolves. I decided long ago that I was that third kind. Humans are so much more dangerous than animals, anyway. And I refused to be cruel. It was actually mercy when, knowing what the Ministry would do to him before they discovered he knew nothing, I bludgeoned Mark to death.

Magic might be amazing, but there aren't many spells that can protect against a surprise attack with a thick metal rod.


End file.
